McDowell Mountain Ranch Park & Aquatic Center — Attraction in Scottsdale

Positives:

Pool facilities themselves are quite nice. There are 2 high dives and to low dives, large water slide, a lap pool connected to the diving area, a much shallower large pool which is primarily geared towards children, and a very enjoyable "lazy river" where people can float slowly on tubes.

The pool offers swimming lessons, adult active water fitness, and organized swimming and diving teams practice there. The swimming lessons were excellent for my young children.

Negatives:

The pavement gets HOT. Seemingly NO measures have been taken to mitigate this. A coating or cool-krete product could serve to remedy the issue.

There is a designated eating area ona raised gallery, eating and drinking are prohibited on the pool deck. This rule is almost never enforced. People pull out their coolers and devour prepared meals poolside with impunity. My children ask me why they can't have food on the pool deck "like everyone else". I can only tell them that we follow the rules.

Compounding the issue is watching a pool administrator walking out to the pool deck to speak to one of his lifeguards while scarfing a burger.

The locker room situation is a problem.

There is one small family changing Room. The rules state that a child over the age of 4 cannot go into the locker Room of the opposit sex.

Am I supposed to send my 5 year old into the locker room by himself to get ready?

This problem is further compounded by the official position of the pool that they will not tell anybody to use their own sex's restroom facility. Men apparently can go into the women's locker room and restroom if they feel like it. I verified this with the staff at the front desk. This obviously makes me less than comfortable about sending my son or daughter into a locker room alone.

It cannot be overstated how often the pool's rules and regulations are ignored or selectively applied by the employees. There is NO CONSISTENCY OF ENFORCEMENT.

It had gotten to the point that we did not know if my son could use the water slide on any given trip to the pool because it always depended on the interpretation of the height measurement stick at the front desk.

We do not actually know what the rules are because they are never applied in any degree of consistency.

It makes the pool less fun because we are always wondering if something we're going to do for fun is against the rules and we just don't know it yet.

The facility is generally nice, but it is badly run and has insufficient...

By far the fanciest pool I've ever been to. I attended for a private event, but was impressed by the amount of lifeguards on duty. They have a large pool for laps and basketball/volleyball, a diving area, a water slide, and an area for tots that's about 1 foot deep with a lot of large sprinklers that rain down water. My personal favorite was the last river. It was really nice just floating around on an inner tube. However, there are several spots of the lazy river where there are waterfalls or buckets of water that fall on you. They are fun but shockingly intense. To the point that they knocked my sunglasses off my face. The place also had a gym, outdoors skateboard area and vending machines. Since I was just there for a short amount of time for a pool party I didn't have the chance to explore those or the locker rooms. Hoping to go back soon because our family has...

Threw my 3yr old son an "unofficial" birthday party as the staff categorized it by, which allowed us to hold the event at their aquatic center without having to pay the high costs of a group reservation and restricted party space. Regardless We had plenty of personal space to set up tables for food and gifts. Enough room for our guests to all gather for cake and presents being opened and then played with. I believe our "unofficial" off the books party was more accommodating then the indoor rental space would have been. Not to mention all we had to pay was regular admission which very reasonable for entire family, especially after the front desk was Nice enough to give a discount and charge everyone as Scottsdale residents at the lower admission price. Party was a great success. Will return for more family gatherings and...